Playings AA's deepstack vs drawing hands

Question

Tournament blinds - 500/1000 with 100 ante

Participants:

• Hero - UTG+1 (43,700)
• V1 - Cutoff (32,900)
• V2 - BB (23,400)

Preflop

• I look down at A♥A♠
• I raise to 4.5K.
• Folded around to the cutoff. This guy is steaming from the hand before were I made him fold a big hand.
• They both smooth call.

Flop

• 7♥K⋄2⋄
• BB checks.
• I bet 14.5k.
• Both call.

Turn

• 3⋄
• BB shoves.
• I tank a bit and then shove.
• Cutoff calls.

River - not relevant

Showdown

V1 shows AdJd and V2 shows Qd7d. I lose.

My mindset is to extract the most value from the hand so i can only think of few different lines.

(Line 1) Limp with them and check raise preflop very big.

(Line 2) Call the BB all in on the turn and release if raised.

(Line 3) Raise bigger preflop and shove on the flop.

What's was a right way to play Aces vs drawing hands deepstack?

Answer 1

I don't see how you could not busted here with AA in a 3-man table.

You make a big raise preflop of 4.5x and they both called; that seems a big raise but also on a very loose table, since a guy is calling around 20% of his stack with merely Q7s, so your move of overraising was good, you probably read the table of being very loose, since with AA you want to make people stay in the hand with lesser bets rather big.

Both player calling created a large pot of around ~15k. Notice this is around 40% of your remaining stack and an SPR as small as 2.5. With such a small stack against such pot and obviously as strong hand as AA you're getting into pot-commiting waters if you're either call / bet now. And since you're going into pot-commiting either way and be the aggressor with a monster hand, you should:

shove it now

That move has these pros:

• You're giving these loose players the worst possible odds to continue with a draw
• You relieve yourself with future difficult decisions when ⋄ comes
• You're denying yourself good odds to call with AA even if ⋄ hit and be in awkward situation
• The pot is already big in relation to your stack

Instead, you bet pretty big, although against loose players able to call easy-peasy any draw, without regard in their pot-odds vs draw, even if that pot-commits them largely. Think:

Why just betting where you would call all your money if they raise / shove on you?

Out of this, you didn't make any error, in my opinion most players would just busted here with AA against guys that pay little attention to pot odds, either pre-flop or post-flop, especially in 3-man table.

Line 3 seems more appropriate to me, regarding the looseness of the table mostly. If they were raising monkeys with stats like 75/35, i would just limp preflop, make them build the pot before shoving my stack preflop.

Answer 2

You should have bet more on the flop.

At the flop, the pot size was 14k, and you bet 14.5k. The cut-off's remaining stack after calling this bet would be 14.4k.

If the cut-off has put you on AA or top pair, then they will be acutely aware that if they hit their flush they could easily stack you say 70% of the time. Therefore if they call, they will hit the flush by the river 34.5% of the time and win the existing pot of 43k (assuming he calls the flop) and an additional 14.4k 70% of the time when he stacks you.

Therefore the cut-offs expected income if he calls is given by,

0.345*(43 + 0.7*14.4) = 18.31k

The cut-offs expected expense is just the cost of calling now, which is simply 14.5k

Therefore the cut-off's profit is given by,

18.31 - 14.5 = 3.81k

Therefore the bet is still cheap enough to be a profitable call by the cut-off.

Ideally however you will bet just large enough to make it unprofitable for them to call, and not much higher (as you want to encourage them to make mistakes and it makes your post turn and river decisions easy)

Therefore you want to bet an amount, x, such that the profit of the cut-off is 0.

Therefore,

0.345*(14 + 2*x + 0.7*(28.4 - x)) - x = 0

Solving for x yields,

x = 21.14k

This will mean if you bet $21,140 the cut-off will break even with calling.

Therefore if you bet more than $22,000 and the cut-off calls, then the cut-off is losing money to you in the long run.

I have phrased my argument referring to the cut-off rather than the BB because the cut-off has the larger stack. Therefore by ensuring your bet is unprofitable for the cut-off to call, it will automatically be unprofitable for the BB to call also.